Scroll though to see the tricky games your brain likes to play on you.
9 – Sympathetic Pain
What is sympathetic pain you ask? Well, have you ever seen someone slam their finger with the car door, and although it wasn’t your finger, you were able to feel their pain? Well, that’s what sympathetic pain is. Researchers used MRI scans to test how people’s brains react when they see the image of an expression, and when they make the expression themselves.
8 – Sleep Drunkenness
Sleep drunkenness typically occurs when a person is woken suddenly. The person gets confused and will do strange things such as answering the phone when the alarm goes off or sometimes the person may even get violent and act belligerent. When the confusion wears, the person may not even remember behaving in such a way.
7 – Hypnagogia
Hypnagogic hallucinations occur when you are in that place where you are just about to fall asleep but are not quite there yet, or as you try to wake from your slumber. These hallucinations can be auditory or visual and are distinct from dreaming. Research shows Read More >
6 – The GPS Effect
Do you use your GPS to get just about everywhere? Well, researchers suggest you should stop, or at least use it only when you really need to. The GPS effect is the idea that relying too much on your navigation system not only gives you a false sense of security, but alsoRead More >
5 – Semantic Satation
Have you ever reread a word several times and found that the word began to lose meaning? Although it is a familiar word, you get confused. Scientists call this phenomenon semantic satiation. When you say a word, your brain finds the semantic information for it and connects the Read More >
4 – Peripheral Theory Of Emotion
To grasp a good understanding to this peripheral theory, I’d like you to imagine that you are on a camping trip. You and your family go fishing, you toast marshmallows, tell ghost stories, and then you tuck yourselves in for the night. The next morning you wake up to a ruckus, as you zip open your tent you see a roaring bear towering over you!
At this point you would assume you’d be screaming but Lange’s peripheral theory of emotion states that not until your heart rate rises will your brain receive signals of danger and fear. Some scientists believe that emotional responses are on a loop but Lange’s theory has yet to be disproven.
3 – Earworms
An EARWORM?! Don’t worry, it’s not what you think. Have you ever gotten a song verse stuck in your head on repeat? You sing it over and over for several days. Well, that’s what you call an earworm. You begin singing the verse to this song but you don’t know the rest, and since your mind doesn’t like unfinished business,it puts that same verse on repeat. Your mind keeps coming back to that unfinished thought over and over expecting to complete it.
Scientists say that the only way to break the cycle is by focusing on a cognitive task, such as reading. Sometimes, however, the spell resurfaces.
2 – False Memories
Most of us are fully confident that we accurately recall events from our past. They are our fondest memories, our greatest experiences, so of course we do. Well, think again. Researchers have found that our minds fail to successfully take in all of our surroundings when creating a memory, so it makes something up that makes sense in order to fill in the gaps.
They conducted an experiment where they planted a memory in a woman’s head, leading her to full heartedly believe that she had gotten lost in a mall as a child. When she retold the story she even made up a part where an older woman helped her. When the researchers told her that it was placed in her mind as an experiment, she had to call her parents to confirm that in fact that never took place. If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?
1 – Sensory Deprivation
So what is sensory deprivation? It’s the theory that when a person is deprived of sensory input, he/she will have hallucinations in order to fill that void. To test this theory, researchers placed test subjects in an anechoic room, a chamber made to block light and sound.
The subjects reported seeing faces, shapes, and having olfactory hallucinations. Some even reported feeling a threatening presence. Researchers explained that when we are deprived of sensory input, our mind gets confused and it creates its own. Not to worry though, this won’t happen often but when it does, just remember that it’s all in your head.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 38
- Next Page »
